Downhole wellsite equipment may be used for various oilfield operations including, but are not limited to, well stimulation, wireline logging, measurement-while-drilling, logging-while-drilling, directional drilling, well construction, and hydraulic fracturing. Wellsite equipment may be subjected to extreme environments, including, for example, high pressures, high temperatures, and cyclical or changing environments.
For example, wellsite equipment used for oilfield operations may often include positive displacement pumps, sometimes referred to as reciprocating pumps, which may be used for pumping fluids into a wellbore and the surrounding reservoir. A reciprocating pump having multiple pump chambers that each receive a reciprocating plunger, which may be referred to as a multiplex pump, may be used in hydraulic fracturing, where a fluid, including a proppant, is pumped down a wellbore at a flow rate and pressure sufficient to be injected into a fracture. In some fracturing operations, a muliplex pump may be required to pump up to twenty barrels per minute at pressures up to 20,000 psi. Because pumps used for hydraulic fracturing applications may be very large, the pumps and other equipment for such use are frequently moved to the oilfield on semi-trailer trucks or the like. Multiple pumps, for example, up to 36 multiplex pumps, may be connected together along a common line at the well site to produce a pumping system for outputting the desired volume and pressure.
To monitor the health of wellsite equipment, sensors are often placed along areas of the equipment having relatively higher propensity for failure. For example, sensors are often placed on high pressure equipment, for example, in areas near multiplex pumps, and along pipes or other areas containing fluid flow. Sensors may measure flow rate of a fluid, temperature, and pressure, for example, to monitor and predict failures in the area in which the sensor is disposed. However, for large scale oilfield operations, such as in hydraulic fracturing operations, the number of sensors required to monitor the health of the entire system may go into the thousands, as well as require complex or coordinated analysis in incorporating results from each sensor to determine the health of the system.